The Wolf Of All Streets - Major Win For Bitcoin & Crypto! Crypto Town Hall With Yat Siu, Bruce Fenton, Lou Kerner, Alex Chizhik, Gracy Chen, Dan Spuller & Others

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Crypto Town Hall is a daily Twitter Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in the crypto and bring the biggest names in the crypto space to share their opinions. ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉  https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL  - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets    ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/    Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor.  Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Scott? Hey. Has anyone ever told you that you're a very volatile man emotionally? No, I'm actually quite even. You're quite even? Yeah, he just doesn't translate well in WhatsApp chat. You know that the worst thing that you can do to a volatile person is tell them that they're volatile. You know that, Mario?

Obviously, you've got more experience than I do. Well, Scott, I don't think you're volatile. I actually think you're very, very level-headed. I say things as

they are. It's not volatility. I just have no filter. I agree. I agree 100%. Is that better

ran? I just thought that Scott was perhaps on his cycle, and so I just thought not to reply to the WhatsApp group today. No, but cycles are temporary. Yes, it's seven years. I felt that Scott was very sensitive today.

And that's why I felt it for the last couple of days. And Scott's been very sensitive. And so I've been married now for eight years. So I know what it's like to deal with, you know, cycles. And so, like, I know when it's a cycle, the best thing to do is just to take a step back. And that's the same approach I've taken with Scott. I've just taken a step back and I'm going to just let him, I'm just going to let him be, you know, just this week. Okay.

And now he's saying everyone sounds glitchy. By the way Yat and Lou I've sent you both invites I see you in the audience Lou you've come up Yat I've sent you an invite as well And Ron is up

Alright Scott dropped out His emotions just got hurt Yeah I told you I told you He's being very He's being very volatile While waiting for Scott to recover From the emotional breakdown

I wonder if we can get him back. I wonder if we can actually get him back. I don't know. He might just be here for a week now. No, let's just say Scott, yeah, he keeps doing that. Scott, we just want to say you're a great co-host. We actually don't mind you. We think you're a very level-headed, emotionally stable man.

There, he's back. Hey, Scott, you're back. We were trying to say this. little bit to you as usual. Sure, it did. Sure, it did. Yeah. I was hurt by Rand. We just want you to know that we appreciate you, Scott.

We want you to know that we appreciate you, Scott. Thanks. Now, Scott, since you don't want to talk about the FOMC, we're going to start with the FOMC. We're going to keep it short, but we will start with it if that's okay. Is the first of that okay with you? I missed it completely yesterday when I was talking with RFK, and it was the Predictable Nothing Burger that we assumed it would be, right? Yeah, by the way way congratulations on that space um and you know with with rfk how was it was he actually no let's start with that what's the recap from your discussion with rfk i mean i think i was impressed with his breadth of knowledge

certainly about uh bitcoin about the environment and energy i think it's great to have someone who is an environmentalist be such a aggressive proponent for Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. He seemed to really be very far down the rabbit hole. I mean, I happen to know, obviously, that quite a few of his very, very key and close advisors on all of his policy are huge Bitcoiners. And I think that that's where a lot of it comes from. So I can say that I knew in advance, but speaking to him sort of reaffirmed, if you're a one-issue voter and what you care about is Bitcoin, this guy really does get it.

He really does care, and he's really down the rabbit hole. Obviously, you have to weigh any politician's opinions on other things and decide what you're going to vote for. I mean, I can say we're going to have Mayor Francis Suarez here on Monday. I also think he's great. I've interviewed him before. I think the jury is out. It's just really encouraging right now that we have so many candidates that are legitimately

passionate about Bitcoin. I think we have some that are superficially just saying things that maybe they think the Bitcoin community wants to hear for votes. But that's the first step, I think, in them falling down the rabbit hole like it is. Did you bring up, Scott, did you bring up some tough questions like the idea of backing the US dollar with Bitcoin among other assets?

Yeah, so that was my first question. And he, I won't say he walked it back a bit, but I think he basically said, listen, I'm talking to my policy advisors about it on how it can work. To me, that's more of a one of those campaign promises. That's a huge maybe that's a good soundbite. I'm not saying he doesn't necessarily intend to do it, but I think we see a lot of obviously specifically presidential candidates, politicians float ideas that they think are in the right direction that they don't necessarily know or think can

actually happen in practice. But I think conceptually, he's into the idea and more just speaks to his legitimate passion for the space and his understanding, whether he knows how to get it done or not, that fiat is problematic. Yeah, it's the statement of don't hate the player, hate the game you know make these statements like this should be expected from rfk and any other policy yeah and i think um yeah it's also go ahead i was gonna i was gonna add one more thing it's just sad to see the the the the impact media can have on one's image like it's crazy so i've been listening a lot more to him recently and it's actually makes a lot of good points.

It's just sad to see that the only thing they keep focusing on every time he's mentioned is his vaccine stances, which is a lot more nuanced than one would expect when one sees the headlines. Yeah, I agree. It's nuanced, but I will say that in our space, we didn't ask him about it, and he did talk about it. Whether it's purposeful, it's a true position, wherever he stands on it, he definitely is not shying away from that idea and he's not hacking off of it.

So I listened to Chris Cuomo speaking to Patrick Bette-David on a podcast specifically when they spoke about RFK and they spoke about what are his prospects here. They spoke about the Democrats' strategy to not let him rise to the top. And the strategy is that they're drowning him by hitting

him with false and fake narratives. So there's a seven to one ratio. So for example, when someone fuds you on something, there's a 7 to 1 ratio. Your response will be 1 to their 7 of the fuds. So they'll fud him by saying XYZ about his certain policy or certain stance, and then he has to fight 7 times as hard to actually get back to 0.

Now, I mean, we know this because we've all been attacked on Twitter and YouTube and whatever else, but it's a campaign strategy that someone who's powerful can deploy against someone who's competing with them that's not powerful. It's just hit them with a bad narrative and they have to fight seven times as hard

and spend seven times as much money to get you the to get you out of the narrative. And so, I mean, that was one of the interesting things that I got from the Patrick B. David conversation with Chris Cuomo. Highly recommend it.

Highly, highly, highly recommend it. Yeah, as much as I don't do politics too deeply, I think that actually there is a perspective that for him, this could be playing in his favor because any press is good press, right?

And he's getting a hell of a lot of free press, whether positive or negative. And we've seen that with presidential candidates before. And I think he's performing better than most would expect. I think also the other pro-Bitcoin candidates are performing better of a vac, you know, Ram Swamy doing quite well versus what

people would expect. But listen, we do have some politics to talk here. It was funny, I was talking to Dan Spuller sort of privately right before this. He was like, it's a shame that the two biggest committee hearings are happening live basically on the floor of privately right before this, he was like, it's a shame that the two biggest committee hearings are happening live, basically on the floor of Congress right now while we're doing this spaces. And he can tell you that we're actively trying to get Richie Torres maybe we'll see if he walks into the hallway and comes to comes to join us but uh maybe we can start there guys i don't know if you want to do a market update but i think we should talk about this bill now this is the breaking news get into it get in we've got a pretty incredible panel that i want to speak to so maybe kick it off with you obviously you're the head of industry affairs at blockchain association you've uh behind the scenes been helping us quite a bit with understanding what's happening, obviously, with helping to book politicians. Maybe you guys can give us the broad strokes.

I know Ron is here as well as Alex. You guys are all tracking it. Just tell us what's happening. Well, I just wanted to kick things off just from our end. Thanks again for having us. It's always a pleasure to be up here on stage with the team here. And I think we're going to get Torres, I mean, by goal, hopefully we'll get him the next hour or so. It really just depends how long Maxine Waters keeps this financial services committee with these procedural

tricks. But I did manage to get my colleague Ron Hammond. He's on the Hill right now. So maybe you can give a quick update. And I know he's excited to get some other updates on the hill right now. So maybe you can give a quick update. And I know he's excited to lay out some other updates on the ag side too. Yeah, sure thing. Hi everyone. Sorry if it's a little loud in the background here. I'm currently on Capitol Hill. It's pretty noisy outside the committee room.

So just for a quick reset here. So there's two major bills going on right now. Yesterday was the market structure bill that was voted in the House of Commons Service Committee on a pretty bipartisan basis. Six Democrats break from the CFTC, they are actually debating that bill right now. We do expect to have Democrat support there. It does seem to be having a lot more of a bipartisan effort, so that's really encouraging. To the points earlier, we were talking about the House Magistrate's Committee, which I'm sitting outside the room right now. There is some drama on the stablecoin side.

Now, just to recap here, stablecoins actually have a Democrat-led coalition here. It actually was Maxine Waters, who was proposing stablecoin regulation for quite some time. It started all the way back in the day to leave. Right now, what's happening is that there was a effort from the White House. It looks like it's the National Economic Committee. They objected to the bill when they were hearing rumors that the Democrats were going to get behind this legislation on stablecoins. And again, it's a pretty smaller piece of legislation compared to market structure. But in our opinion, this is the very legitimate bill that can probably get signed a lot of interest rules this year. Of course, the drama right now,

there has been some last minute changes that the White House has been really pushing for at the last second. And Chair Waters is trying to work with the White House to get them on board, but it looks like they're not budging. And now there's some parliamentary tricks in terms of trying to delay this bill. And Republicans on the other end, we want to move forward right now. Congress goes back to the districts to talk to the constituents all of And Republicans on the other end, we want to move forward right now. Congress goes back to their districts to talk to the constituents all of August. So in their mind, this is the time to do it. We need to go now in their opinion. And again, I want to stress,

this is just the committee vote. This is not the vote in front of the whole House floor. This is for just the members of Congress who deal with this issue on a very weekly basis. So right now there's some tactics. We'll see what happens. But I would say this is unfortunately the worst case scenario at the current moment. Maybe there'll be some light at the end of the tunnel.

But right now it's looking a little dicey, unfortunately. But before you, there was some, there was good news from yesterday. I want to just pile it. Yes. Hey guys, I I want to just pile away. Yes, Salem? Hey, guys, I just want to jump in here. It's Alex in the chamber. All of our policy folks are also on the Hill, literally going door to door, especially to House Democrats,

to show bipartisan support or more bipartisan support specifically for the stablecoin bill. The stablecoin bill, ron said it's actually pretty crucial this should be a slam dunk right we all talk about this in the industry about stablecoins this is the easiest part of the whole uh it should be the easiest part of the whole policy um we're maybe a little bit more optimistic than ron but yeah ron our call on on what you said about what happened last night very very late very late last night in the White House. It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate.

But this is a bipartisan bill, and we do believe that eventually it will pass. And look, on both of these bills, there's actually five. We could talk about the other ones, but these two are the biggest. Just because it passes out of committee and then has to pass the House floor, then it goes to the Senate. The breaking news and then I'll give the mic back to Scott. But the Justice Department just dropped a few minutes ago, a regular guest, Eleanor, tweeted about it. They just dropped the campaign finance charges against SPF. So that's the second charge against Sam that's been dropped since his indictment. Did it say specifically what this one was for? I mean, we obviously know he bribed Chinese officials. It's financeed the finance charges, but doesn't say exactly

the specifics here. I'll try to find. The team is writing up a tweet for me. I covered this on my show today. It just feels to me like Sam Bakenfried was connected in the right circles and that slowly, slowly

the charges are going to be more and more dropped against him. And the problem, the sense that I'm feeling is that by the time it gets to trial and, you know, the trial will take some time, we're going to get to a point

where the guy's going to land up doing like six months in prison and maybe house arrest, you know, for another six months. And it's just going to, I mean, it just feels like that's what's going to happen. And it's going to happen

on technicalities and stuff like that. And I think it's just going to, I mean, it just feels like that's what's going to happen. And it's going to happen on technicalities and stuff like that. And I think it's a shame, but I think it just shows that if you can make it in the right vertical circles, it is what it is. And yes, I wanted to go back to the discussion, Scott.

And before doing so, can you just give an update for the audience? Why does this bill matter? There's probably panelists here who are better to answer that than me, but I think that at this point, any clarity is good clarity for this industry. And if we can get some very clear answers as to what is a security, what is a commodity, why either of those things matter, and who's in charge of deciding that, I think it's very clear that that would be extremely helpful.

And then obviously on the stable coin side, we just need more clarity there as well. I mean, Dan, is that somewhat accurate? Maybe you can give a better answer. No, I would absolutely concur with this. I'm sure Ron will too. I mean, again, the House Committee on Financial Services that yesterday, that was the first ever digital asset markup that we worked with. And the financial innovation technology, it's a long acronym there. The acronym is SIT, but it stands for the financial innovation and technology for the 21st century. And as Alex mentioned, there's several other bills floating around Capitol Hill right now that we're watching, but this is a real significant week for the industry. And I think we're going to have some progress out of this.

And yeah, I want to ask you a question, by the way. Yeah. Pleasure to have you. I think this is the first time you jump into the space. Not sure if you came in back in the FTX days, but good to have you. I've got a selfish question for you because we've been watching what Animoca has done and we're invested in a lot of the same projects you guys are invested in. I want to get your thoughts first on the regulatory clarity that we seem to be getting in the US, as well as touching on the big news, the XRP ruling and the excitement around the ETF. Have you guys changed your strategy in any way over the last 12 months? So first of all, thank you. It's first time for me on the spaces, so great pleasure to be here.

I think there's a few things to add. First, the XRP ruling is great because I think it basically provided the nuance that not all tokens are the same and shouldn't be viewed in the same manner. So that's great. I think it's sort of revitalized and recharged the industry, particularly in the US. But I think the other thing that we're also seeing, and I think this is the narrative, we've all been bullish on the space because in the last nine months, basically, Asia has been charging forward on all matters Web3 and crypto. I mean, Japan just most recently sort of changed the tax rules and basically put Web3 and what they described as a metaverse as part of the prime minister's actual national policy. Hong Kong basically has not just approved a bunch of ETFs, but basically given out licenses,

allowed for retail trading of 15 to 16 different types of crypto in the same week when China actually talked on CCTV, which is a national broadcaster, that you can buy Bitcoin in Hong Kong, of all things, and put out a Web3 white paper that talked about how Web3 is the future of the internet. So this all happened literally just a month ago in Asia. So from our perspective, things are growing quite quickly. And so we have been sort of looking at the US perhaps a little bit more warily, especially because of the actions of the SEC in the last sort of year or so. But I think much of the development just shows that I think the US is not in agreement with what's going on here and

is pushing forward. I think, again, the XFP ruling is great. I think what's happening now basically with the hearings is wonderful right now. I think the congressional sort of victory there in terms of getting a number of Democrats to sort of break, shall we say, and sort of approve this, at least in the Senate is great too. So I think it all shows that I think there's some broad momentum happening in this space. And my final point I just wanted to add is that I think we always hoped and thought that this would be one of the very few cases where US technology, US would not be leading in the technology segment, if you think about it. And so why would the US willingly give up their sort of historical lead in blockchain

in Web3? It just doesn't make sense other than the fact that it's politics. And the fact that China is pushing so aggressively towards it is actually interesting as well. And to me, you know, if there's one country in the world that China is pushing so aggressively towards it is actually interesting as well. And to me, if there's one country in the world that does something that the US would react to, it's usually China. So hopefully they can help put some nice competitive pressure alongside that. Yeah. And I saw you guys announced a couple of days ago an investment of $30 million into a Hong Kong-based company. Are you guys still investing heavily in US-based companies or seeing capital move away from the States? So still investing heavily in US-based companies or are you seeing capital move away from the States?

So we are investing in US-based companies, but not as much. But part of the reason we're not investing as much isn't because we don't want to. It's because actually the temperament in the US is actually quite sort of low itself, meaning people are a little shy. They're not able to do things. And I mean, because they just don't know what it is. And I think regulatory clarity will definitely help that along. So for

instance, if you don't know, you know, if you can launch a token in the US, or if you can launch a token in general, because you're US based, then you have a disadvantage to any other country or any other place around the world that can because it has a regulatory clarity. Because, you know, from a crypto perspective, it is kind of like sort of operating with your hands tied behind your back when you don't have the same mechanisms available to others. I think that's a real disadvantage to US entities.

So a lot of them are thinking about offshoring. There's over a thousand sort of companies currently applying for licenses or trying to set up in Hong Kong, for instance, because you can now put a bank account in Hong Kong for crypto. I mean, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority went out and told specifically the banks, like HSBC,

and said, hey, you've got to do business with crypto companies. I mean, imagine if the Treasury Department did that in the US, for instance, what effect would that have? So that's kind of happening there. But again, we're hoping that this is more of a short-term thing. And everything that we're seeing right now in the US and the pushback to me is positive momentum that maybe even within the next six to 12 months, we'll see some positive momentum develop in the US. I'd agree. Alex, I'd let you respond to Yat's points. And he seems pretty optimistic about the US and what we're

seeing and considering the bill that we were discussing. If you could link it to what Yat just mentioned. Yeah, there's a lot in there. Before the Chamber of Digital Commerce, I was actually listing side of an exchange, OKCoin on the US side, OKEx globally. We've seen the same things over the last couple of years with the Chamber. And from the exchange, we used to invest in a lot of projects there is money leaving the u.s i would say that when i'm here's what i'm i'm an internal optimist i originally from ukraine i actually experienced capital controls coming from the soviet union to uh

the u.s in the 90s so this industry is very near and dear to me the u.s figures it out we get things right and the conversations that we're having with folks on both sides of the aisle, it's actually fairly non-partisan. Although, yes, more Democrats are averse to crypto because of SPF and because of others. But when you, I'm sure Dan and Ron can echo this, when we're sitting in front of some of these lawmakers, the nuance of the conversations is actually pretty striking. So we're sitting in front of some of these lawmakers, the nuance of the conversations is actually pretty striking. So we talked about RFK. We're very close to them as an entity. He's incredible in terms of his understanding of Bitcoin and the space, not necessarily the rest

of crypto, but Bitcoin specifically. But these guys understand the industry in a level that I haven't seen in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. All of this was just, you know, these guys who had talking points and most thought this was fraud. The level is very, very deep. Now, there might be 20 people that have this level, 30 people in Congress, but the level of those folks is very deep. And so they're driving actually very nuanced conversations. And one point that Ron said earlier was the FIT bill, FIT for the 21st century, the Financial Innovation and Tech Act. It actually sets the whole infrastructure and framework for how digital assets should be dealt with in the Senate. I'm fairly optimistic it will pass the House eventually. Whether it passes the Senate, we'll see. But it's great momentum for the industry to actually have a framework out there, a nuanced, smart, thoughtful framework.

And the U.S. is the biggest financial market once the U.S. comes in. There is no stopping crypto in general, but once the U.S. comes in, we're going to see an inflection point. And I want to just update the audience on the spf news before i give the mic back to ryan and scott so spf was so the charges that were dropped are related to violating campaign finance rules there's still seven other charges

um that that are relating to fraud which include defrauding customers and lenders of ftx um but the so officials in the Bahamas informed the government that they did not extradite Mr. Sam on the campaign finance charge. Late last night, the prosecutors filed to drop the charge, claiming that, quote, in keeping with its treaty obligations to the Bahamas, the government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count. So I'm not sure how much it relates. A lot of people are crying foul and saying this relates to the connection he has in the government. And Ryan, I think you mentioned he just knows the right people.

Obviously, I'm not a lawyer. So maybe getting lawyers today, if anyone's in the audience, or tomorrow, just to kind of dig into it a bit further. But considering that he wasn't extradited for this particular charge, maybe legally speaking, that puts him in a good position. But that's the latest. Yeah, but I mean, ultimately, he broke the law, and he's getting out on a technicality.

You know, ultimately, he broke the law, he's getting out on a technicality. And I don't know, you mentioned there was... But technicalities matter. The law is full of technicalities. I know, that's what I'm saying. And I think what's going to happen is because I think he's well-connected,

I think that he's going to be, they're going to find technicalities for everything. And he's going to end up serving six months in prison. And then, as I said, like six months at home for a crime which, if he wasn't politically connected and didn't know the right people, he probably would be in prison

for a very, very, very long time. Okay. Well, it's difficult to comment on it. It's a fair point. Scott, are you back? Yeah, I'm here. Just having normal spaces glitches so everybody sounds slightly like a robot, but I can hear what everyone's saying. Cool, man.

Look, I have another question for Yat. And again, these are more selfish questions. And Louis, I'd love to get your thoughts on this as well. Yat, considering the regulatory clarity that we're getting in the US and seeing the XRP ruling, there's just been a lot of, even the people that are optimistic when it comes to crypto, rarely anyone comes up on stage and says that I'm bullish for all these startups. Now, we know 90% of startups fail, but the narrative is just so negative when it comes to startups that it's been surprising even to myself. What I want to ask you is what's exciting to you? Do you agree with that

narrative? Are you guys still investing heavily? And for us, for example, we're massive into gaming, really, really excited about gaming more than AI. So we'd love to get your thoughts on where you stand as Anamoka. Sure. So first of all, we've exceeded 450 investments so far in terms of anything related to Web3 and crypto. So we continue to be super bullish about the space. And again, I go back to this sort of thinking that if you're in the US and you're hearing the US narrative, it does sound very negative. You literally cross across the East and go into Asia or even the Middle East, and the narrative changes entirely. So, in fact, I was just actually last week in Paris, you know, at ETC and ETH Global.

And, you know, this is France, this is Europe. And again, I mean, while, you know, there's a little bit of skepticism here and there, it's been very, very positive. The energy is very strong and people are building in the space. So I would say that for everyone who feels a little bit down about what's going on in the US and feeling like there's no investors, there's no VC money, there's no whatever, come across the pond on both sides of the ocean, as it were, and just experience what's happening in Web3 and you'll come back super energized. So I think that's the first point I want to make. But before we take a point, yeah. So when you said that, you look at VC investment, if you go across the pond, it's a lot more bullish. But we were discussing the numbers a few days ago, and that was one, you can ask Grant and Scott, that was the space I was most excited about. And the numbers are bad everywhere, number one. And number two, the US still had the lion's share out of VC inflows.

So are you saying that the drop in the East is not as bad as people make it out to be? Or are you saying the drop is there, maybe it's a global liquidity crunch, but the sentiment is still positive? So the sentiment is positive, but I would say in terms of the crypto funding that's happening, it's not actually that bad. So maybe if you want to compare it against the bull market of basically early 2022, sure, right? But even when you look at Web3 gaming in the last quarter, something like $750 million, close to maybe even $890 million was still invested just in Web3 gaming, for instance. That's not actually a bad number. It's all relative to when you consider what's happening in the global context. And that's certainly better than traditional Web2 gaming, for instance. So if you're talking about as a broader space, you still have better chances raising money as a Web3 blockchain game than

you have as a Web2 game, for instance. And speaking of the general bullishness, all the major game publishers are also investing in Web3 games in Asia. So you've got, for instance, companies like Square Enix, you've got Krafton, the creators of PUBG, Nexo, Netmarble, right, Igumi, and of course ourselves and others all investing. And even Chinese sort of companies are talking about how they can enter into the Web3 space, either in direct or indirect ways. So there's capital basically moving into that. I think one of the things that's quite possible, and this is obviously something that I need to maybe check later on because I don't have the data in front of me, is maybe the way that it's tracked is different, right? Because when we look at some of the big trackers in terms of VC funding, we often have to go back and have explanations as to, well, we made this investment, it's not tracked. Like the people, for instance, I think some of the VC trackers track our investments. They probably say we have like a couple hundred investments when we have over 450 investments. So I can't really speak for

everything that's out there. But broadly speaking, the sentiment is no more than just positive. There's also funds. That's not the other thing. There's VCs raising money. Like in Japan, for instance, there's five or six new VCs that have come about just for Web3 funding that did not exist, say, six months ago. So there's money in the space. And then there's corporate funding as well that you see happening as well. You've got variousui and so on are investing in Web3. That's kind of like the equivalent of having Goldman Sachs and Citibank and Bank of America making Web3 investments in the US, right? So maybe it's not the same pockets that you're used to looking at in VCs, like the sort of A16Z types, because corporate funding is more common here. But also, just speaking, I think you should never count out the US. Our general view is that, you know,

the US will come back just because of the fact that, you know, it's one of the best places for, you know, innovation and so forth. And also, we think this entire sentiment is politically driven, like this anti-crypto sentiment. Yes, SPF might be a trigger point for it,

but, you know, isn't it just because of the fact that perhaps the narrative suits the Democratic Party a lot more to go anti-crypto because of the fact that it has a, from our external lens, an anti-capitalist narrative? We look at the stats, we look at, for instance, the perspective of gaming. The American gamers don't like NFTs, whereas the Asian gamers like NFTs, for instance, they also broadly like crypto. And why is that?

Well, we think it has a lot to do with the youth perspective, which is, I think, a democratic mainstay, about anti-capitalist perspectives. Capitalism hasn't worked for them for the last 20, 30 years, right? They look at people that are billionaires and they say they're a fault in the system. It's wrong, for instance, which is unthinkable if you think about what America used to represent.

So that's kind of, I think, the difference here in Asia. People are very pro-capitalist because for the last 30, 40 years, capitalism has broadly worked. So the thing we sometimes say is that the American dream is more alive and well in Asia at the moment than it is in the US. And so you draw these political lines, is it a surprise that most of the, maybe the American potential candidates are all Florida banks, which makes an anti-crypto narrative very easy target, shall we say, for certain parties?

And just as a second question, what's exciting you most right now? And I want to get your thoughts as well on the whole narrative of AI sucking capital out of Web3, which makes sense. But you guys getting into AI, we've seen a lot of funds, a lot of...

I was actually surprised. We did a space and we started discussing this and a lot of people caught me by surprise by saying they've shifted to AI and they've become bearish on crypto. And there's people that's been around in the space

for many, many years that I still respect. So I want to get your thoughts on this and whether Animoca is, I want to say pivoting to AI, but expanding heavily into AI. So first of all, our view on AI is that AI and Web3 and crypto are broadly intertwined. I'll get to that shortly, but we've done AI investments since 2018.

So if you look at our background, if you look at our website, we actually launched AI Accelerator in 2018, 2019, and have in our portfolio over 60 AI investments and growing as well. So we've never left the AI narrative. But the reason why we believe that AI and blockchain is intertwined is, I'll give you just a couple of examples. The first one is that AI needs a source of actual data truth. What's the best source of data truth in our view? It's going to be blockchain. If you think about, for instance, what happened with, you know, stability when Getty Images sued them, it's because they were able to see stability based on Getty Images' watermarks all over those generated images because they couldn't even bother to pay a license fee for it at the time. So that's kind of sloppy. But when you think about on-chain dynamics and proof of ownership, that's actually where you can start measuring and distributing value, knowing that this AI generated a sort of artwork,

for instance, from 1,000 artists, they can actually start fractionalize that income and distribute that. So I think blockchain is a perfect solve for that. But the second one, especially from the gaming angle, is NPCs. For those of you who are not familiar, NPCs are non-player characters.

That's actually one of the main sort of, let's call it semi-AI agents inside games, really dumb AI, at least in the current Web2 narrative, where you interact with, right? The guilds, the places you buy items from, the things you transact with, these are all coming from these NPCs. And, you know, millions and millions and millions of transactions actually happen through these NPCs in these Web2 games. While you take them into the more autonomous AI segment, into Web3 gaming, what are they going to transact with? It's going to be crypto. They're not going to open a bank account. They're not going to have fiat. Basically, you're going to have much more

AI transactions happening through these digital frontiers with a digitally native currency, which is in the form of crypto. So we are actually quite bullish about this because we think that sort of AI and crypto activity will accelerate. And it's possible that, you know, through the exchanges in the future, when you think about what's happening with bots anyway, that you're going to have a lot more of these autonomous agents basically transact on our behalf. When people talk about an AI being your personal assistant, starting doing shopping,

what are they going to be shopping with? With your credit card or with crypto? So again, we think AI and crypto are actually tied to each other. We don't think that they're two separate narratives, which again, in our part of the world are connected. But I guess because of the narrative, because really, I think a lot of it has to do with the way that politically, it's been sort of pummeled so hard in the US, that it's almost unfashionable to talk about crypto. So it's better to just move to AI. But again, I think it's, you know, they're critical,

but the cycle, I think the two are connected with Web3 is the future of the internet and AI is the future of, you know, basically sort of, you know, as we see today, then they are tied together. Future of humanity. And before, I wanted to ask the same question

to Lou and Gracie, but one more thing. I want to get your thoughts on three things. Worldcoin, NFTs, and are we in a bull market,

a raging bull market, as Rand likes to say? So the raging bull market, I think, is about to come, I would say, in terms of where I'm positive about, because of everything that's happening, right? So there's obviously retail and consumer skepticism, that's to be understood. Last year has been really tough. I mean, let's just face it, right? But I have general sort of optimism given the fact that everything that took place in the last 12 months, you know, would kill most industries.

And here we are, basically, you know, crypto as an industry continues to sort of actually become and stay quite strong. And the rest of the world is pushing ahead on Web3 and crypto. And by the way, they're pushing ahead not only because they think it's better for their consumers, they're pushing ahead because of the fact that there is a broad thematic on de-dollarization as in less dependency on the dollar, which becomes their national interest. And also, they don't want so much dependency on US-based technology, right? If you're in the US, you take it for granted. But if you're outside of the US, you're totally dependent on US technology.

Use Facebook, use LinkedIn, use Microsoft, use Google, use Amazon. You are actually dependent on them. And if they make changes to your platform, your national interest gets affected. So it's not a surprise to me that major countries around the world are thinking of ways to break out and Web3 is the answer. So that's kind of why we're broadly bullish on this. NFTs to us represents digital property rights. That's the way in which we own our property. We think of that as the future of everything, which is why we're so focused on NFTs, because that's basically the foundation of our physical rights, our physical liberties and our physical freedoms. And prosperity comes from the fact that we can enjoy property rights. Again, in America, you take it for granted

that you have a property, you buy a house, you're never worried that it is taken away from you. But for many other countries around the world, this is a new thing, the ability that we can own something and that we don't have to worry about losing it is the reason why you can invest in it and why you can have a mortgage and why you can have people build network effects on top of it. So all these network effects that were possible in the physical world now become possible in the digital world because we have the freedom to do so. A simple example in gaming, if I use, imagine if Fortnite, now I've got to do this, but imagine if all their skins were NFTs. The effect isn't going to be just that the skins might become more valuable as we see in CSGO. The effect would be that third-party game companies are going to start incorporating the skins and creating new network effects out of them because they can sort of get those customers.

But then it makes the skins more valuable, it makes the product more valuable, and it creates all these network effects that makes the value of the skins of Fortnite more valuable and have more utility than it had before. And we see this today. We used to buy a car just to take you from point A to point B, so it's faster than a horse. Today, we buy a car for a thousand other reasons because of the network effects on top of it, because it looks cool, because it's beautiful, because you can have baby seats in it, because it's great for family, because it looks sporty, because it gives you social status. All these network effects make a car and anything else we own much more valuable than this before that same effect we'll see with digital property rights with

nfts um now on world's coin honestly no comment don't you gotta come yeah yeah you have to comment you have to comment you can you can give it you can give it broad you can try to avoid it here and there but it's. I'll tell you. I'm really interested to hear this because I think that WorldCoin is one of the best things that has happened to crypto for a long time. I mean, so first of all, yes. Okay.

So I agree with you, Ran, that I think WorldCoin from a narrative perspective and from a sort of, let's re-energize the space. And the fact that it is basically, in a sense, American-led, I think is a positive.

Yeah, you just can't always be so nice. You just told Ran, I think you're wrong in the nicest way possible. You're right from a narrative perspective and it is US-based. But please continue the sentence. I'm curious. Yeah, so I think

the one thing to me about WorldCoin, I mean, I would say, and I think we still have to, we can't count out people like Sam Alston. They obviously have a great sort of, you know, I think he is, I would say he has a pure vision in terms of what he's trying to achieve. I think it's early. And I think the one risk that WorldCoin has is that this is still very much, and this is the thing, what happens when you inject capitalism early in any space is the speculative narrative that attaches to it. And I think what WorldCoin needs to conquer is the utility versus the speculative narrative, which is the same that has been true for blockchain gaming in 2021, for instance, going through these cycles. So that's basically, I would say, where the biggest risk lies with it amongst other things.

That's a fair statement. I think they can't get utility. It's one of those things that you can't get utility until you actually have the users. Like this is the case of if you don't have the data set, if you don't have the proof of humanness data set, then the problem is that you can't build the products around it. I think once you have a data set internationally of uniform data that proves humanness and registers a lot of people,

I think it's almost as powerful as a blockchain. And that's why I'm not... Yeah, I think it's very overvalued. Tokenomics are really bad. I think the fact it's 1% in circulation is really bloating the market cap. And I don't want to get into that discussion. But I think in terms of a concept for crypto,

for proof of humanness, I think it's certainly one of the most ambitious and realistic things that I've seen. So there's ambitious and crazy, and then there's ambitious, but hold on, you actually could pull this off. And I think that these guys are on the border of ambitious, but you actually could pull this off.

Because I agree with everything I've said. Yeah, I just want to say one thing, Rand. You know, you said that you cannot have utility until you have the users, but you can at least have a vision of what utility will be. Because right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but they say, hey, we don't know what utility will be.

I'm sure Sam Altman here, he would give you five things that they're about to do. Good point. It's all to our imagination. I don't think Sam Altman here, he would give you five things that they're about to do. Good point. I don't like that point. It's all to our imagination. I don't think Sam Altman said, oh, they're just going to database people and we're not going to do that later. Yeah. I think the one thing is that I think with the crypto space and I guess more specifically

with the WorldCoin example, it does mimic a little bit sort of how the pharmaceutical industry is kind of looked at, which is like something in the future and the trust to build that. And I think the community construct here is what's really important. And this is the part where I would say WorldCoin has a disadvantage compared to most other crypto narratives at the get-go, which is that they don't even have a strong community in comparison to some of the other. That's not to say they can't build it, right? Meaning that it's more, feels more on the speculative side for the time being that it feels on the community side. Because the community actually upholds the long-term value, which we see in gaming as well, and upholds essentially the vision of that, right?

If you have many people who follow its vision and support it, then you're going to see, you know, an ability to see it through over long-term. But if the only people hold it for one purpose, which is to make money off it, as opposed to its vision, then you have struggle because they're going to sort of cycle out, which is again, what happens often in any capitalist framework. So you can't have 80, 90% speculators to have it long term. You need to sort of flip that to have sort of 80, 90% people who believe in this vision and a number of speculators to keep the market going. That to me is where I don't have clarity as to what that ratio in WorldCoin looks like. And that's practically what happened in 21 and specifically 22, where you had a strong speculative narrative enter the

field. While a lot of people went into Web3 from the non-crypto perspective because of things like Sandbox and Bored Apes and NFTs, the ratio took some time to develop. And now it's getting to a kind of level that is more sustainable, but wasn't at that point earlier. And to me, the question is, is this world coin at that point as well? Time will tell. And I wanted to go to Gracie and Lou. lou lou i'll go with you first um general thoughts first with a broad question are we in a raging bull market and then i would love to get your comments on what yet has said because my questions would probably be the same uh sure so um first normally i'd be disappointed about talking so little on a Twitter space, but getting a chance to learn from Yacht

is a gift. So thanks for that. And from my view, I joke that I have a word for the tendency of markets to swing between bubble and crash and bubble again. And I call that capitalism. That's just what markets do. And I think it's always hard for people, for anybody to know where we are in the cycle. But I'm a long-term trader, I guess. So I don't really care where we are in the cycle. I got a million dollar price target on Bitcoin in 2031, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be surpassed. And now would you say, do you think we're in a raging bull market already, or do you think there's a lot worse that's coming? I mean, from my perspective, first, I think everybody who's doing work on regulations is doing God's work, so thanks a lot for that. But at the end of the day, I mean, talking about getting the regulations is going to bring back the bull market.

I mean, maybe it'll bring back a bull market, but not the bull market. In order for the bull market to come, we actually have to build stuff that people really want. Well, how would you define the bull market? And that's something we've discussed before, and I'll go to Gracie and Yat again afterwards with that particular question. Will we see a bull market similar to the last one and the one before? Rand said no. Now it's different in the sense that regulation is here. We're not going to see the same shit. Have you heard of capitalism? This is Scott's argument.

Regulation didn't help tamp down on the internet boom. That's what capitalism is. Capitalism is nothing but a newly-revealed currency. And the next bull market, I'll bet you is going to we'll get to 200,000 Bitcoin in the next bull maybe. So the

internet, at least the internet we all use is much better than the dark web. The dark web is obviously a very dark place where a lot of illegal stuff happen. But the internet doesn't have that. So the point that I'm making, the reason this is the case is because of regulation. We all don't like regulation, especially if you're on web three. But at the same time, you can't paint it with a brush like all regulation is bad. And I think that-

I'm not painting it with any brush at all. All I'm saying, Mario, is that it's my belief. We need to build a product that people want to use and can use. We're still kind of in this pre-Netscape phase where it's still way too hard to use. Nobody's going to read a book, you know, except for the 5,000 people on this. Twitter space is, you know, to learn about it. That's not, you know, most people want to do like they did with the iPhone and pick it up and get massive value. And I think we're on the road to that. But, you know, obviously we're not there yet.

And I'll ask the question again. Now I'll go to Gracie as well. So do you think like Rand, that the next bull market will be more regulated in the sense that there'll be less scams, there'll be less pump and dumps? We'll have the same shit going hype. We won't have 2021 and 2017 again. Or do you believe like Scott it's going to be all over again the same stuff and if there's regulation in the US people will do it from outside the US crypto is crypto. I'm with Scott

because I've met humans. So maybe can I just comment on that quickly? Please. Yeah. So first of all, I would say I actually think that so I guess it's more nuanced

from my memory which is that I do think that, so I guess it's more nuanced for my memory, which is that I do think that the crypto bull market, the upcoming one in terms of is going to be bigger. And it's going to be bigger because you're going to have much more adoption. Because when you look at what's happening with various attempts by governments to basically create their own stable coins, like with Hong Kong, with the e-Hong Kong, with Japan, basically is looking at different forms of stable coins. They're going to be onboarding people onto it.

And when they're onboarding people onto it, they're going to be looking at buying different type of crypto assets as a result that isn't just tied to their respective CBDCs. I think the other thing that we should also look at is not to underestimate the effect that Japan's tax laws will have on crypto, because now you're able to hold crypto because you no longer have a situation where the taxes as they change are going to sort of, so you're taxed on basically just holding them. You can start issuing tokens. And then when you realize that it has a big effect for markets like Japan, and of course, what happens between the relationship with China and Hong Kong. So we're actually quite bullish about the fact that there is going to be, we think in the future, a legal way for Chinese people in the mainland to actually

eventually have a way through Hong Kong to acquire crypto. And that's because right now, Hong Kong has always been the financial intermediary for the mainland anyway. So it makes sense for it to do that. And when you think of it in the context of China's sort of attempt unofficially in de-dollarization, that starts to make sense, we think. So broadly speaking, we think there's going to be that influx. And to this point, to Lou's point about sort of capitalism, while there is going to be regulation, and I think that's a good thing because it means that we can go after the people who do abuses like the SPFs around the world that we don't need to have in the space. But because there's larger numbers coming in

and the broader space, just like how the internet basically just kept growing and growing in effectively an uncontrollable fashion, it's going to do that with one difference because crypto embeds value in it. Obviously, it's going to have a bigger effect than just sort of what information did. And the one difference also is it's not siloed. So with Web1, when information and data became wild, it got siloed in Web2 because companies were able to monopolize them. So all that value started getting captured inside the Facebooks and the Googles of the world who basically didn't share that.

Now, what happens when that actually gets bust open, like open sourced it in Web 1, and that value gets distributed more equitably across the ecosystem, then there's going to be a broader capitalist effect and more money inflows. And so we think it's going to be more bullish than the other one for that reason. And let me just quickly comment before you give a degree. Yeah. And as you comment, yeah, of course. And I'll just add one more thing in the question as well, so you can comment and answer that

second point. Is that, do you, like, my question is, will we see the same, like there was a period during the last bull market where like 90 something percent of projects that launched were doing a 10X at launch with an immediate unlock. And then we saw something similar in 2017 that wasn't as involved back then. Will we ever see those again or will it mature up and we'll still see hypes? But no, that level of hype. I mean, I remember back in the internet, a company called Books A Million said, hey, we're going to start selling books on the internet.

And they were up 5 or 10x that day. And then went for a run after that. And so, again, that's what markets do. I just wanted to quickly say that comment on something Yacht said a lot earlier because I thought it was super important for people in the United States. And that's first, I wrote a blog post recently that said, if you want better US regulations, leave the US because I think that's, you know, the best thing we can do is build a huge industry. And if we have a huge industry, the U.S. will be happy to have us. And I think, you know, you should go to Hong Kong. It's really coming back strong there.

Go to Singapore. Token 2049 is amazing. Go to Dubai. Oh, my God, Dubai. Go to Lisbon. I'm currently in Vilnius. They've got an awesome ecosystem here. Grace, how are you? Gracie,

sorry. Hello, everyone. I'm in Tokyo. I heard Yad and a lot of people talking about Japan. And I'm indeed in Tokyo for one of the largest Japanese conferences. And there has been quite tremendous speakers such as the prime minister of japan um i know i met evan from uh animoka hi yet um yeah so it's been a lot not happening and i guess japanese uh are also quite bullish about crypto space by having the very clear record. But is it? But liquidity is drying up everywhere, no? Sorry, liquidity is? Liquidity is drying up everywhere. So I know we're more bullish on the East than the West right now, and that might shift with the regulation that Alex and Dan and Ron were talking about. But would you say that despite that sentiment being better in the East, it's still pretty bad everywhere.

The numbers just don't look good. It is. And you were asking about whether this is a bull market or not, whether we're entered, right? My personal opinion is maybe not, but I don't know. I guess the main thing is about whether there is incremental capital coming from traditional financial space to crypto.

And that's why the two issues really concern the crypto space so much. BTC endorsed and passed all those ETFs, BTC ETFs from Citadel, from BlackRock, from Deutsche Bank, et cetera. And number two, the interest rate hike and decrease of the interest rate. So that really concerns the money inflow and that determines whether Bitcoin and crypto is entering the bull market or not. That's my personal opinion. But again, like many of you, I don't have crystal ball. I don't know.

What's the other questions that you want to discuss? WorldCoin. Yeah. Okay. Actually, we can talk about WorldCoin. But before that, what excites you the most? And I like to ask that question a lot for selfish reasons. I talked about my love for gaming.

Yeah. Obviously talked about AI surprising. I didn't know he's in AI. It kind of pisses me off that he's in AI so early. It just makes me so annoyed. So that was, I was like last year, I was annoyed how Animoca was so early in web three gaming.

And I came into the game relatively late relative to Animoca. And now I know they were even earlier into, or not earlier, but they were relatively early in AI as well. So we'd like to get your thoughts on what excites you the most right now, Gracie, and what you guys are excited about at BitGet. I see.

So for later this year, the H2 of 2023, there are five issues that we keep a close eye on, especially in terms of good trading or investment opportunities. Number one, the concurrent upgrade of Ethereum network, which happens in fall this year. And it can make the Ethereum layer 2 10 times, if not 100 times cheaper and faster. Number two, the BTC ETF. We can't emphasize that more. And I guess a good way to capture the gain is to invest directly into the major coins

such as BTC ETH. Number three, the capital, we saw lots of on-chain data around the capital inflow into LSD and LSD5. So some of the altcoins can be highly affected in terms of this concept, such as LDO, SSV. That's like the... Not into details again,

but basically many of the upcoming LSD5 projects we think that that has lots of potential do you say upcoming

upcoming DeFi projects or what you said LSD5 the link LSD5 yeah the link

yeah like AGI understood agility protocol and what are you actually let's shift let's shift it up

let me ask a question to Lou Gracie what are you actually let's let's let's shift it up let me ask a question to to lou gracie yeah um what are you most bear gracie can go first what are you most bearish on in crypto and this one takes cuts you got to be honest well i i can i can when i say this i guess many people may hate me but right now i'm quite bearish about Warcoin. By the way, can I do a question? Gracie, can you tell me why you're bearish? Oh. Oh, she just dropped out.

So, maybe, look, I mean... Yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. I'm actually excited for you to answer because I know how nice you always are. You don't write questions like this. So we'll see what you have to say. Look, I'm generally bearish about meme coins as a whole. And only because of the fact that they add a lot of this extra speculative quality into things that basically don't make any sense.

And I understand that it's basically more like that of an effective casino. I get it. I know why people are maybe think of it as fun, as exciting. But I actually think it distracts and detracts from the positive narrative, right? It's these things that basically end up sort of pulling people, conservative people away from saying, oh, look at the meme coins. It doesn't mean anything. And I do understand it's cultural context. So I don't want to discredit some of them, but obviously then you have sort of the sort of, you know, people who take advantage of this and then, you know, people get hurt advantage of this. And then, you know, other innocent people get hurt because of that.

So I generally am bearish on those because we know that they're not necessarily long term sustainable and not all of them. And most of them won't become like a doge or a ship, for instance. But I just realized I didn't actually answer to you what I'm actually really, really super excited about because I just told you what I was already doing. So the things that we're actually excited about in the sort of mid to long term, which we started making moves into, is actually education. And the reason we're excited about education is because it's a $5 trillion space. It's something we all do. And one of the things that we're pushing currently

with Open Campus is really this idea that teachers can become the next creators. And for the thing about it also politically, we also think of it as a more positive narrative, because I think that's one thing that was missing in crypto to some extent. People making more money and having financial inclusion is important, but it's an alien concept for a lot of people because people get stuck. Yeah. I think there was one company that came on the show. I think they were a sponsor a few months back that you acquired. Was it Brainy Tap? It was a Web2 company? TinyTap. TinyTap. TinyTap. Yes, yes, yes.

So they were on the show. Loved their concept. And I knew there was something up because the way you guys went all in and you kind of started incorporating Web3 within education. So I was really excited. That's something no one talks about. Considering you've been early in AI, you've been early in gaming,

and you know, fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. And fool me a third time i'm an idiot so i'm not gonna fool me third time i'm actually gonna look into education a bit further but it's something that no one talks about like i literally cannot remember anyone bringing up education into the spaces in the crypto spaces probably since tiny tap so um that's really cool why education though well i told you i mean outside of the fact that that's something we all do and it's a huge space that

somehow we take for granted in terms of it's a $5 trillion space. It's much bigger than gaming, for instance, even though that's bigger than music and movies combined. But the other thing about education is also, it's something that is a very powerful crypto narrative that's positive. Our teachers should be making more money. They don't, for instance. They're perennially underpaid. But if we actually enable them, as we have done with TinyTap, for people to make literally a year's worth of their salary and the sales of their first NFTs, which is a way in which they can embed their publishing rights, then it's a positive thing for them. They then become the agents of change because who are they going to teach about crypto? That's the other thing. We kind of live a little bit in our crypto bubble. I was just speaking at TED in April. It was the only Web3 talk there. And a lot

of people came up to me and thought, oh, I thought the metaverse was dead because Facebook's version of the metaverse is dead. And so within our circles here in crypto, we all kind of joke about meta and horizon. We don't think that's real. But everyone outside of our bubble thinks it is real, right? So again, sometimes we just need to step out of our own crypto bubble where we sort of see things the way we do because we understand it or because we understand financial sort of literacy better than others, and basically bring them in instead and step out of that. And I think teachers is the way to do it politically as well, because if we can make teachers more money in crypto, then guess who are they going to be voting for?

What are they going to be supporting? Because they're the ones who need this as well. And before going to Loon, asking him the same question, I was going through the audience and it's so nice to see. I was going through the audience and I'm seeing all these different projects and some were invested in that are here. And I kind of want to applaud all of them. That you guys are still here considering where the market is at

Considering the amount of pain that you've been through over the last two years Considering how difficult it is to get users to get capital so I see Nakamoto games there. For example, I can see X versus there. I'm literally choosing random ones in the audience mighty labs. I don't know anything about them. They might be crappy But Just give me a shout out for even being here another one is munch so yeah just want to give you guys a shout out everyone that's still building in the ecosystem now are the same ones that were building when yatsu was investing in projects back in 2018 2019 everyone was giving him shit for doing it and now everyone looks up and anamoka as being

the geniuses that got to the crazy evaluations they're at. So you guys are building in that same period when there's blood in the waters. So I just want to applaud you all. And let me go to Lou. Lou, I want to get your thoughts on, you know, Yat kind of twisted it to what he's most excited about, but I'm not going to let that slip. I want to know what you're most concerned about, what you think is still overvalued.

Meme coins is what Yat mentioned. I actually like that answer. What's yours, Luke? I would say the thing that is most overvalued is the importance of regulations and the amount of mindshare we give regulations in the industry. I mean, again, I think the people doing it are God's work, but even if we had every country in the world saying, great, come on, do all the crypto you want, we still wouldn't have the mass market project that we need. That's like music to Scott's ears. Scott is so happy to listen to you.

And Bruce, Bruce is having a blast. He's probably going to subscribe to you now on Twitter. It's exactly what Bruce, Bruce probably jumps into our space purely to make sure everyone knows that regulators are idiots and are killing crypto so and again i i didn't say that and you know i mean i think a lot of regulators are idiots but i mean you go to countries like dubai or you know abu dhabi and they've got incredibly smart people like drafting up incredibly thoughtful policy. And, you know, somebody on the, earlier on the call said,

you know, that he's bullish on America. Yeah, America, you know, always gets it right. And, you know, I think America always used to get it right. But, you know, we just had an event on January 6th a couple years ago for the first time. Some people think that's an aberration. I think that's a trend.

Well, on that point, Lou, hold on. I like when someone disagrees with someone else. Dan, you disagree with what Lou just said? It's just I'm trying to focus on the positive things right now. Ah, fair. It's there, boys.

I'm hoping for the positives. I'm hoping for it. But you think, obviously, the SEC is not one we could praise, but you think the XRP ruling, the bills that are coming through, would you look at those positively, or do you think we're giving them more attention than they need, Lou and Dan? I think it's a great positive,

especially like we were talking earlier in the conversation about the bipartisan support for these but it's also a generational issue I mean it's funny somebody put this up on Twitter I can't remember what it was earlier last night and there was like an age synopsis and the individuals

that were essentially all under 45 both parties were very supportive of this. And then those on both parties on the other side, with a few exceptions, were against it. So there's a fundamental age gap here, too, that I just noticed. Yeah, I mean, personally, I actually don't think laws even exist. I think they're figments of our imagination. You can't touch them. And all there are are people in power and what they do with it, right? And things that one

day are legal, in the US, we're getting our rights taken away left and right. And so, yeah, even if we pass the law and say, it's okay, the next guy can come along and say it's not okay. And the great thing about this is, the awesome thing about this is, it doesn't really matter in the long run. Ran, are you there? I am, sir. Okay, so I'm going to ask you to talk about Bybit right after Gracie speaks and then tell me, answer that last question. I want to end the show with you answering the question of what you're most bearish on. But before doing that,

Gracie, I'd love to get your thoughts on what you dropped out earlier and if you could focus on the thing that you're most bearish on right now in crypto. And you've got to have the guts to say exactly what it is, even if the audience won't like it. Exactly. And I said that and I was whatever say, I was

quite bearish about WorldCoin I was worse to leave the space I don't know what happened but here's WorldCoin WorldCoin hacked into what is it

tragedy hacked into our space that's what people like to blame it on but go ahead you had an AI detecting the negative effect

yeah so maybe hold on maybe I hold on let me take this further maybe me Ran and Scott are not actually here we've registered our identity on WorldCoin sold it to someone else world coin yeah so maybe hold on maybe i was on let me take this further maybe me ran and scott

are not actually here we've registered our identity on world coin sold it to someone else who's used a deep fake or deep voice whatever you call it to build i'm a bot that's sorry go ahead gracie so we got carried away i guess one way to detect whether real or not like by asking some personal stories like scott Scott, you remember, when was the last time we were mad at each other? Then we know. Did she say when was the last time? Hold on, did you say

when was the last time you were mad at each other? Is that what you said? When was that? No, when she said met. Oh, met. Met. I thought you were talking mad.

I'm like, yeah, okay, cool. I mean, mad in New York, Singapore, token 204949 an event in los angeles we've uh we yeah we've been together quite a few times okay that's a real scott okay so um here are the reasons um because we we study on-chain data and uh and number one we saw the market making stake was really high. I'm not going into details. You can look at DAO analytics yourself.

But the basic idea is actually right now, the market makers control more than 60% of the tokens in circulation. So their chips are very high. It could manipulate the market very easily and determine the direction of the currency. And then number two, according to their white paper, the token release plan of WLD was actually has a very rapid total release curve, meaning it has significant selling pressure, especially after one year and three years. There will be 17% of the supply in one year available and 40% after three years. And comparing with the current valuation of, I was just checking it on CoinMarketCap right now, it's 21.9 billion valuation USD. Think about how many companies have this valuation when they just

launched. And then they are like 30, 30... Tracy? You know, I believe that if you believe that a 21.9 billion world coin is overvalued, which by the way, I do too, you know, you can

short it on BitGet. I am doing that. Oh, wow. I respect you. I think that's the only reason. Are you shorting it? Okay, you're not shorting it. I did short it. But this is my personal advice. Let me just clarify. It's not investment advice, nor does it represent bigot. I am doing that, and with not like very high leverage, but less than five times, but I am shorting WorldCoin.

Well, I'll tell you why I think you may be making a mistake. Maybe. I agree that the valuation of WorldCoin is absolutely ridiculous. And I think that it should be valued at maybe one quarter of what it's valued at the best case scenario. The problem is that only 1% of the tokens are in circulation. And the majority of those tokens are sitting with market makers on loan. Now, in a situation like that, the problem is that if you short and the market makers start market making, and I say market making very loosely because we know what market makers do in a market then the problem is that they can liquidate you so i think that this is a typical crypto bad tokenomics ponzi if you want

to call it that where retail is going to get wrecked because they're buying into the hype the hype is exacerbated by the the token originator who's put a very very low amount of tokens into circulation and unfortunately as more and more and more tokens come into circulation and there's still 99 of our tokens to come into circulation retail is going to get wrecked and i mean i'd love to i'd love i did short it i'd love to continue shorting it but i i don't have the guts. On that point, well, Ran, on that point then,

can you add on to what you just said on what you're most bearish on in crypto? Because you're always the excited one, the bullish one. We're in a bull market. We've been in a bull market for the last two years. So what are you bearish on now?

I didn't say the last two years. I said since the beginning of the year. I'm joking. I'm joking. In a bull market. I'm sensitive today. I'm squatting out on the same side. I know.

I can see. I can see. I just have to shut up for this couple of days. But go ahead, man. What are you bearish about the most? I think I'm most bearish about the fact that we still have, we don't have enough regulation. And I don't want to scream too much for regulation,

but there are too many scams going on in crypto. And I think that, you know, there's so many of these coins that are being launched, scam coins and stuff like that. And I think every time we do that, we just score an own goal against ourselves when it comes to regulators. And I just think we're our own worst enemies. We keep screaming ourselves over and over and over again. So that makes me a bit... Ren, I have a flip side to that, Mario. I agree with Ran, and I heard Yat say the same thing earlier, effectively, about meme coins,

scams, creating these things out of thin air simply for speculation. That's the one side that I'm bearish on. But the other side I'm bearish on is the extreme toxic maximalism of any community in this space, but particularly Bitcoiners. I think that they're doing us no justice, that they don't welcome people who are genuinely trying to learn. If you don't worship at the altar of the church of the maxis, then you're not maxi enough and they'll pull your card and you're not a member of their cult anymore. And frankly, we should

be embracing every single person who comes into crypto whether it's through but scott why are you scott why are you talking like this about cory clipston i don't know why you need to bring up cory clipston on this guys guys guys no no guys we we but you know scott i'm actually let me let me play devil's advocate on that particular point i don't know who's unmuted let me mute everyone someone's in the car and on okay's advocate on that particular point. I don't know who's unmuted. Let me mute everyone. Someone's in the car. Okay. So on that particular point, I would agree before what happened over the last year.

After the past year, I did a space just after FTX, and I called it Ode to Bitcoin. I should probably call it Ode to Bitcoin Maxis. I agree. That could be too stubborn. FTX, and I called it Ode to Bitcoin. I should probably call it Ode to Bitcoin Maxis. I agree, that could be too stubborn, but the only thing that has proven utility, and Ryan, you've made that point, and I don't agree with Corey and all of these maxis, but I want to give them some credit. Is there proven to be right? Okay, that's not my point. Okay. I agree with them. I'm a Bitcoiner. That's the point. I think we all agree with that sentiment and that's why I was very specific to the

toxic side of it and I said toxic Bitcoin maximalism. The problem is that they alienate people who come in who are passionate about Bitcoin just not in the way that they necessarily desire. Scott, didn't we agree? Hey, Scott, I will tell you, not to talk

about corn i first got indicted though agreed to i i agreed with you um but uh then i i i read about the altalena which was some boat that uh the president of israel think when they needed guns they were bringing guns because it was being brought by monach and bagan who they thought was gonna try and take over their army. And anyway, it's a long story, but the bottom line is I now actually think that, to me, this is a revolution. And revolutions need really fucking passionate people to succeed.

And passionate people are going to butt heads. And passionate people are going to piss people off. I agree with you. I agree with you. It would be better if they didn't. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just saying, but we need people. And if only the passionate people are left because they alienate all of the other people who actually want to participate, I think it's largely problematic.

Listen, as the cycles continue, that side and any side of any community like that will be marginalized because it's become a fraction of the people. If there's a million people here, it's going to be the same thousand maxis who are angry. It's not like they're going to be recruiting in mass at the same level. And I just think that what we need right now is to galvanize, come together and to be welcoming even to the people who come in the wrong way. Right. And I've made, right? Yeah. I mean, obviously, I agree with you. We have more Bitcoiners because of, regardless of what Topsy-Matsy say, Doge signed up millions of people to crypto exchanges who found their way, maybe only 50% found their way to Bitcoin. And Yacht doesn't like Doge.

He doesn't like those right he doesn't like me but i mean i wouldn't be the one anybody who's here literally anybody who's here is great i welcome everybody with open arms i was on a panel a few months back and somebody before me was on community and the guy before me said man fuck you and i'm like hey, hey, can you give me a mic? Was that just me? Go ahead, yeah. I think you're saying something. Sorry, no, I just wanted to say that

we see history repeating itself a little bit, because if you remember about five years ago when CryptoKitties came out with ERC-721, a lot of the more maxi crypto community, especially in the Ethereum ones, didn't like what NFTs were doing because it was taking up gas costs and was sort of changing network and so-called perverting sort of the purpose of the network. And we see the same thing happening now with ordinals and inscriptions basically five years

later with Bitcoin. But in the same way though, the way that NFTs have basically onboarded masses into Ethereum and forced it to scale and sort of develop all these L2s and scaling solutions. I think the same is happening with Bitcoin. So to me, it's only a matter of time. I think maxis are fine. The same was with the first phase of the internet as well in sort of what we define as Web 1. You had a lot of internet maxis as well who didn't like where it was going.

But for mass adoption, people will come in and essentially sort of change the culture as it were. So, you know, I'm long-term positive about this. I 100% agree with that. Yeah. And I think that's the exact right approach and a great corollary to what happened in the past. And to be clear, we asked what I'm bearish on. I don't think it's going to stop anything. I just, it's a little frustrating sometimes to see people pushing back against those who clearly want to be a part of this community. Right. And trying to dictate the way in which that can happen, because I think that we're too small to not have open arms and all come together to work. But that answer would be like, hey, there's some people we don't want in the community. We don't want the next meme yeah but those want to almost almost every single of these major bitcoin maximalists people have thrown out some of their

names all started or at least participated in vc altcoins all of these things in the past so already if they if if their belief is that they came to bitcoin through experiencing those other things they should give other people the same opportunity to come to Bitcoin through those other pathways. So it's just hypocritical to say that anyone who touches these other things should be banned or gone when they themselves have the same path. Yeah. I mean, listen, almost every single, Bruce, you have more perspective on this than anyone. Go ahead. Yeah, I think, you know, those are really, really good points. You know, I think both, you know, Rand's point and Scott's point come back to belief in markets.

You know, we don't need regulations as much if we believe in markets. And, you know, what I ask a lot of my friends who are kind of, you know, what Scott's referring to. And it's really important to make the distinction. It's not Bitcoiners and it's not Bitcoin Maximus. It's a subset of Bitcoin Maximus who are toxic. And my point to them is I say, well, what are you so worried about? First of all, it's absolutely insane to, you know, there was a lot of these toxic Maximus who were like, you know, rallying for more regulation. They want XRP to lose. They want Ripple to lose.

They want Ethereum to be a security. They, you know, there's this meme of everything other than Bitcoin is a scam and they're all securities and therefore should be regulated. That's just very anti-Cypherponk. It's anti... Bruce, when you said believing... Believe in free markets. Free markets

is what it's FTX. Free markets is what it's Lula. Free markets is what it's every project projects. Maybe I take it back. Hold on. Let me take it back. Not FTX. Free markets wanted to LUNA. Free markets wanted to every project by selling. Maybe I take it back. Hold on. Let me take it back. Not FTX, but I'll go with LUNA or with all these different pump and dumps or all these different meme coins. Let me take FTX out of

this one because that one definitely doesn't apply. If the markets are allowed to work and be free, the markets will properly price things. What happens when you have authoritarians running things and you have nanny state bureaucrats paid for with money that they stole from the people sitting in fancy offices, dictating and lording over who can do what and who's the winner and loser? You end up with people like Madoff and Sam rising to the top. If you let markets work

and let people be free, and my point to the Bitcoin toxic message is like, what are you worried about? Are you worried about that XRP is just going to go to a mill? You know, if you just let markets work, they will work and junk will get, you know, pushed out of the market. And that ultimately, there's no magic solution that will eliminate fraud. You either choose to have the people and the masses and the large crowds regulate it, or you choose to anoint some high centralized bureaucrats who are easily corruptible to do it. And those are your two choices. I choose to believe in the people, not believe in politics. You cut off there, but I just want to add that when it comes to the fraud issue, one of the problems is around financial literacy. And the reason why these frauds can happen is because people don't have the same level

of financial knowledge as others do. And so that's the problem that we have. And in Web1, we add to sort of information democracy, but we still don't have a kind of financial literacy democracy. Most people don't understand anything about investing. Money sort of functions with them in weird ways. We still have to explain to people what is compound interest. Not to people in this channel, but to most people around the world.

So I think this is an area that we all have to work on harder, because as we sort of increase illiteracy, then the fraud will disappear broadly. And I think this is the part of the industry we need to sort of push forward. And I think that's really the role of regulation to some extent, not just to educate, but also to protect, difficult also to protect. Difficult as it may be. Yeah, so William, I want you to wrap it up. And I think there's no better person to wrap it up when it comes to educating the masses.

We'd love to get your thoughts on what's discussed so far. Sure, sure. I just wanted to say something quickly before, just to correct Gracie about the float that WorldCoin has. It's not 60%. It's 95% they started with, and now it's 90%. I shared the link in the comments from doing analytics. It's 10 over 110.

I agree with Scott that we need to embrace everybody. You are 90% in community or in mm uh the total float right now is uh 100 from the market makers and what uh worldcon will be 100 one minute one minute yeah 100 yes but only 10 million have been given to users. So total is one bad hand. So you want to do 10 over 110 is 90% right now. And it started at 95%. It started about 5 million were with the users. So that's why we are saying it's a very high number.

There's the Dune Identity Corner. Yeah, I shared the link. I don't want to take too much time on this. But I shared the link from Dune. You can follow it. It changes every day because they are releasing more. More people scan their eyes, their iris, then they get more coins.

Man, these guys must be doing something right because we've been discussing WorldCoin unintentionally in almost every space for the past few days. So we're about to end this space talking discussing WorldCoin unintentionally in almost every space for the past few days. So we're about to end the space talking about WorldCoin. So whatever they're doing, respect to them. But anything else to add to wrap up the space? Maybe we can kick it off with something about your most bearish one and then we can end it on a negative note.

I just do want to say sort of as we're concluding here that we were expecting to have Richie Torres today, but as Habe described earlier, it's taking many many hours maxine waters is kind of icing the entire process but we are likely go go do it go do it go do a space car and just keep it like what this guy did there's a guy uh greg the the guy that posts memes he did a space where he's like everyone stay quiet until elon musk joins and i think they stayed quiet for like an hour and then elon musk was like gaming and randomly joined for four minutes so you could do one about taurus said taurus you've got nothing to do anyway so now that we're hoping that will be the topic tomorrow we should have a lot more clarity on what actually

happened as opposed to it ended up being marked up during the spaces today so that that's the hope and i know dan you'll you'll be back tomorrow'm assuming, if we do make that happen. But I do think we'll get a lot more clarity tomorrow. Yeah. And look, let me give a shout out to our panel. It was a really fun panel today. It was a pleasure to have Yap and obviously Gracie, William, Dan, Lou,

Bruce, and everyone else that was here earlier. And William, on that note, what are you most bearish on? Because I'd love to end this space on a negative note. I'm afraid that we might see another Black Swan event. You never know. I mean, I hope not.

Why do you say that? Is that because of the cracks we're seeing because of the Fed policy? No. There's probably another skeleton somewhere. Some other project is going to... But what's left? Tether, Binance, that's it.

I hope I'm wrong. But otherwise, we have to wait for regulation. And we have to wait for better use cases that make the news. So WorldCoin is making the news. You're right. It's not... I mean, it has some bad things about it. But it's okay.

I want them to succeed and prove us wrong. And we need more headlines. We need more positive headlines out there. But I hope there won't be any more black swans. Yeah, I like when we talk about black swans. There's barely any damn swans left in the pond. Like every swan turned out to be black by the looks of it. We won't know.

We won't know until they surface. That's the issue. If we knew, we would have seen them. But we can't see them right now. What a beautiful negative way to end the space. I actually love it. I'm doing a morbid ending. It's going to suit Scott's mood.

So yeah, a great space, everyone. And just give a shout out to Bybit, who's pinned at the top. There's a few shout outs to do. Number one, the ugly logo on stage. You have to follow it, everyone, because we'll be hosting the space soon on that account. The ugly red logo on stage, number one. Number two, there's a pinned tweet

of an $8 million worth of prizes that Bybit is doing. It's like a competition and you join teams and you trade and you win. Ran explained it earlier, but there's $8 million up for grabs. I think that's what really matters. So check out the sponsored tweet by Bybit that's pinned above.

And thanks for Bybit for sponsoring. And last one, if you want to hit us up to come in as a sponsor or to come on our Shark Tank show that we're launching, just DM us or email us, sorry, on the pinned tweets at the top or DM me or Ryan if you don't want to email. Otherwise, it's a good show.

Appreciate it, guys. Scott, Ryan, any final words? I'm bearish on you. Ryan, are you bearish on me too? Beautiful, guys. One of my co-hosts is bearish on me. The other one doesn't even want to speak. Beautiful ending.

On that note, bye, everyone. Thanks a lot. Bye.